Uffington Castle is situated upon the
Ridgeway, the ancient road that follows the high
ground from the Chiltern Hills to the South
Coast. It sits on the northern face of the Berkshire Downs, like Segsbury Camp,
its neighbour
to the east, and affords very
clear views of the surrounding horizon, especially anticlockwise from the
north-east to the south-west.

The fort is
defined by a single rampart in the shape of a rough pentagon, enclosing a very
conservative 8.25
acres. In its heyday, this rampart would have been about 3 metres deeper than it
now appears, and rather than being lined with grass, its bare chalk construction
would have been exposed, making it an extremely imposing sight on the landscape.
There are several paths which lead into the fort, as can be seen on the
aerial photograph below: the north-eastern and south-eastern are more recent and
may have their origins in Roman times, but the original entrances are in the
centre of the western and eastern ramparts; though the latter is not so obvious
today as it was blocked off during the Roman era. The site has not been
accurately dated, but
archeological finds suggest that the fort was constructed during the Late Bronze
Age or Early Iron Age, very vaguely around about 8-700 B.C. Pottery found on the
site suggests that the fort was used in some form throughout the Iron Age and into
the Roman era.

So far so little that is
extraordinary. Uffington Castle, however, is a startling oddity amongst Hill
Forts, primarily because, unlike its neighbours, it never appears to have been
densely populated, despite there being evidence for buildings inside, nor was it
permanently occupied.
Archeologists are now looking at the possibility that it is not so much a
defensive structure, rather a spiritual centre. One only has to step outside the
fort to get the impression that this site is a little different. Just a few
yards beyond the north-eastern entrance is The
White Horse, a remarkable chalk monument cut into the side of the hill, and
below it is Dragon Hill, a natural chalk outcrop that may have been sculpted by
man, and the Manger, an extraordinary
feature that was formed during the last Ice Age. A little further afield, a
walk of 1¼ miles along the Ridgeway will bring you
to Wayland's Smithy, a splendid Neolithic
burial chamber; although built by a much earlier people, probably for long forgotten
reasons, it may well have retained its mystical significance to those at Uffington
Castle. It is not hard, therefore, to imagine why pilgrims may have been
drawn to this place. It must have been an area of great spiritual importance for
long time, and to very different peoples; indeed it continued to be frequented
by Victorian "pagans" and was used for their festivals from the 17th
to 19th Centuries, the last being held in 1857. Of a
much older time than both these fetes and even the fort itself are the Neolithic
burial mounds that can be found on the path between Uffington Castle and the
White Horse; excavations on the largest, the pillow mound, revealed 50
skeletons, many with their skulls missing. Most unusually, some of these burial
mounds were reused during the Roman and
Anglo-Saxon eras.